


Unexpected Gifts

by MJosephine10



Category: Reylo - Fandom, Star Wars, Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Fandom
Genre: F/M, NOT write about it?, Plotless Fluff, i'm posting this before i realize how self-indulgent this really is, it is not this day, look i just LOVE THEM, probably incorrect use of the force but idc, some day i may write reylo with a plot, tbh, these are just images that come to me, what am i supposed to do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 07:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16404179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MJosephine10/pseuds/MJosephine10
Summary: Neither Ben nor Rey is very used to affection.





	Unexpected Gifts

A slowly-returning-to-life Ben Solo struggled to catch a breath but as he did so it hitched in his throat at the feeling that something was wrong. His bones were rattled from the force of impact and his head screamed with pain but that wasn’t it. He was too used to both; pain and shock had been his constant companions for years. And it wasn’t the roar of the force all around him nor the consciousness of his own wounds- the black velvet pain of those from years past that stayed with him always and the bright red anguish of the wounds fresh from his recent sacrifice.

It was the presence of something strangely cool on his forehead. No, it was gone- no. There it was again! cool and steady. It was, was it a hand? Was it hers? Was she with him now?

He looked up and saw Rey bending over him, hair coming loose from her three buns in stray curls. Her eyes were full of concern and gentleness. 

Pain he could endure; he had no idea what to do with this. Under this realization, Ben’s shaken soul slipped under his own consciousness. 

When he came to again, he fully expected the vision to be gone. But nothing had changed. Before he knew what he was doing and operating on pure instinct and not conscious thought, he felt himself reach out with the force to focus on the hand on his forehead. The defining characteristic of good moments, he had found, was impermanence. They came rarely and you either let them pass you by or took what you could from them while they lasted. Ben frequently did both depending on the day and the damage. And today, he needed this.

But as his entire being reached out to focus on this one moment until it slipped away from him, something else happened. He felt a head lean over his own and the pressure of a gentle kiss pressed to his forehead. He heard a voice say- “Ben?”

He shook his head in confusion as he struggled to process all three things- hand, kiss, voice- as well as- her. Here. 

But as he tried to make sense of it, of how one minute he could be ready to die for the Resistance and the next he could be listening to Rey call him Ben like that, as he struggled to process if this was in fact the Great Beyond after death, he felt her hand in his hair smoothing it down while at the same moment it registered that his head was literally lying in her lap. 

And then she was talking again, asking him a question he couldn’t hear.

It was too much. 

He was on emotional overdrive, nothing made sense.

As he was just about to slip backwards into the half-dead spiritual and physical calm that always took him over in moments when the stimuli overwhelmed, he felt rather than saw Rey lean forward and send him one message through the force.

Stay with me.

He closed his eyes and stayed.

 

***

 

Rey reached the cell door before she knew that that was where she was going. She didn’t know what she expected to find or what she would say or even how she felt, she only knew that something in her heart was pulling her here. Rey was not given to much self-reflection; she knew what she needed and when and reacted accordingly with direct and calm practicality. She slipped through the door quietly to find his broad back turned towards her. For a second, she hesitated, surety about to melt into doubt. Maybe this was a mistake, maybe she should- But then he sensed her and turning-

“Rey,”

His face and voice were full of such open-hearted surprise and questioning joy at seeing her that Rey didn’t know how she could have stopped herself from doing what she did then. Which was run to him (at him) full force and wrap him in an embrace that had in it no intention of ever letting go. His arms went around her instinctively and lifted her off the ground and close to him. She said nothing and neither did he. 

Rey had never considered herself small but she was aware of how small she felt in his arms. There was just so much of him to love. Broad shoulders, the thick head of dark hair, even the striking proportions of his face so close to hers. All of his emotion, all of his passion, all of his mistakes. There was so much. And Rey was a scavenger. When you found treasure like this, this much of it, endless and beautiful, you didn’t let it go because it was covered with a layer of grime and dirt. You took it home with you, dragged it if you had to, and worked at it and with it until it was as beautiful to everyone as it was to you. But you loved it the first time you saw it, abandoned on the desert floor, alone and aching and beautifully unselfconscious all at once.

You claimed it as yours the second you saw it under the burning sky. 

Abruptly, she felt him smile against her shoulder- almost as much through the force as physically- and a wave of embarrassment hit her as she realized that she had been communicating all of this through their forcebond. She was so unused to another person responding to her in any way, let alone reading her thoughts. When she put her arms around him it still shocked her that he did it back. The knowledge that he knew what she felt and its weight and proportions overwhelmed and almost terrified her frequently. She struggled for a moment and in her confusion almost pulled away. But then. 

Well. 

Too bad if he had read her thoughts. They were true.

Apparently, he didn’t mind too much that Rey saw him as buried desert treasure waiting to be rescued from the refuse in which it lived, because he didn’t let go.

In fact, he only held her tighter.


End file.
